


Death Meets at a Knockoff Waffle House

by radioactivesaltghoul



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Ben Solo, Dead Like Me AU, F/M, Grim Reapers, No Pregnancy, Pining, Tags May Change, background Finn/Rose, but they're grim reapers so death is kind of in their nature, fluffy despite the graphic depictions of violence tag, hux is not super in character unless you count having a cat named millicent as 'in character', i had to make someone be dolores herbig, implied past finn/poe/rose, tfw you die and proceed to fall hopelessly in love with your fellow grim reaper
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: "Oh, fuck," he said, the pieces clicking into place. "I'm dead, aren't I?"The woman sighed. "Sorry," she said. "Poe was supposed to collect your soul—""—collect mywhat?""—to help bring you to the next step in your cosmic journey, but seeing as he's completely vanished, I think you'd better come with us."Oh my god, Ben thought.I'm dead and they're arguing about whether or not to call a Lyft to take me to a knockoff Waffle House.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 19
Kudos: 27
Collections: Monstober2020, Queerly Beloved Reylo Fics





	1. Rock, meet bottom

**Author's Note:**

> i binge-wrote half of this au in the first week of 2019 and haven't really touched it since, so forgive any lack of editing. i do plan to finish it eventually, but currently i have no update schedule for this once i post the first few chapters (that are already written). i've been holding off on posting it because...well, 2020, but it's the last day of #monstober2020 and the theme is "grim reaper" so that's as good a reason to post as any, i suppose.
> 
>  **general content warning** : i'm aiming for a fluffy tone with this fic, but the characters in this au are grim reapers who specifically reap people who fall into the category of "accidental and untimely deaths," so there are some graphic depictions of violence. it's an au of [the show Dead Like Me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Like_Me) but it deviates from the plot of the show.

Ben Solo had made a lot of mistakes during his life. If he was being honest, actually, his life felt like one series of fuck-ups after another, with the biggest fuck-up being the most recent one, where he’d crashed and burned his career as the COO of the now-defunct First Order Enterprises company and then proceeded to blow through all his considerable savings on legal fees accrued during the process of untangling himself from his former employer and colleagues.

He fumbled around sleepily, trying to figure out why his phone was going off. He’d actually managed to fall asleep before 4AM for once, although that was probably due to the fact that he’d gotten approximately eight hours of sleep over the previous three days. Depression-induced insomnia was a bitch.

 _Reminder,_ the phone screen flashed. _First day at Happy Time Employment Agency at 9AM._

Ben swore as he pushed himself out of bed, remembering that he’d finally swallowed his pride and applied for a job with a temp agency. He appreciated that he’d been able to move back into his old bedroom at his mother’s house after moving back across the country, but he was getting sick of living in a house he hadn’t set foot in for a decade with a mother who he also hadn’t spoken to in a decade. And considering his employment history as the COO of a company that was currently being dragged through the mud by the government and the media, his options were limited.

 _Right,_ he thought. _The sooner I get there, the sooner I can get the fuck out._ It would be nice to have a change of routine from moping around Leia’s house, anyway.

Chandrila had changed in the decade he’d been gone. There was a somewhat decent public transportation system, for one. He was able to take a bus downtown, rather than spend money on a Lyft or, god forbid, ask his mother for a ride. _Who the fuck names their company ‘Happy Time’ anything?_ he wondered as he got off the bus, following the map on his phone until he was walking into a generic-looking office building.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked Ben, who was not bothering to conceal his contempt for the whole situation.

“I’m the new temp,” he said. “They told me to talk to…” He opened the email on his phone. “Armitage Hux?”

“Second floor, the last row on the left,” the receptionist said. Ben walked off without another word, not bothering to wait for him to elaborate.

He wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting in the last row on the left, but it wasn’t a ginger man sitting at a desk covered in pictures of cats. A sign labeled _Armitage Hux, Head of Temporary Employees_ was hanging proudly in the center of the short cubicle wall. “Hello?” Ben said, eyeing a large framed photograph of a fat ginger cat.

The man jumped and turned around. “You scared me!” he said, giving Ben a smile that was unnervingly big. “Benedict Solo?”

“Ben.” He didn’t bother hiding his disdainful tone or the scowl on his face, and he felt a small sliver of triumph when he saw Hux’s smile falter slightly. _Good. This man is too cheery for his own good._ Nobody should have that many framed photographs of cats at their desk.

The exchange only got worse from there. In response to Ben’s one-word answers, Hux’s tone became sharper and sharper as he confirmed Ben’s information and list of job skills. “I have the perfect job for you,” he finally said, putting Ben’s paperwork in a folder. “Follow me.”

The “perfect job” turned out to be scanning old documents into a computer that was so old, it was still running Windows XP. “We need to convert all of these old files to digital, and then you need to shred them,” Hux said. “Every last paper needs to go.”

Ben eyed the stacks of filing cabinets warily. Refusing to comply with legal regulations regarding file storage history was one of the things that had led First Order Enterprises to its downfall. He thought about mentioning that to Hux, but by then, he'd already made up his mind about calling the temp agency on his lunch break to demand a better posting. Besides, hanging out in a basement by himself was kind of nice. At least he wouldn't have to make small talk around the water cooler, even if the basement reeked of mold that was going to wreak havoc with his allergies.

"Right," said Hux, once he'd shown Ben how to use the scanning software. "If you have any questions, go find Dopheld Mitaka. He's the administrative assistant for the department. Works across the office from me. You get a half-hour break at one, and then it's back to the file room for you." He flashed Ben a very forced smile and then disappeared through the stacks. The effect was rather eerie. Ben wondered if there were any other gingers lurking in the basement. He turned to the unorganized stack of files that were already on the desk and sighed. "This is my life now," he muttered to no one in particular.

Ben swore that it took about two weeks for his lunch break to arrive. Scanning and shredding files was hands-down the most tedious thing he'd ever done. He hadn't even known it was possible to be that bored, and he couldn't get out of the basement fast enough when noon rolled around.

He waited until he'd walked into a nearby park, away from the noise of the city streets to call the temp agency. The people playing ultimate frisbee weren't loud enough to bother him, and he didn't really give a shit if they overheard him yelling on the phone.

"Happy Time Employment Agency," a bored voice answered the phone. "What can I help you with today?"

"I want a new posting," Ben said.

"Are you currently a Happy Time Employment Agency Temporary Employee?"

"Yes. My name is Benedict Solo. I—" He cursed and dropped his phone as someone slammed into him, knocking him over. "For fuck’s sake," he snapped, turning to look at whoever had hit him.

"Sorry about that," the man said, flashing him a broad smile. "I was trying to catch the frisbee. I didn't mean to knock you over."

Ben's anger was now compounded by his embarrassment as he took in the sight of the man holding out a hand to help him up. _Of fucking course. I'm already making the most humiliating phone call of my career, and I get knocked off my feet by a hot guy_. "What the fuck, man?" he said, taking his hand. There was a shock as a jolt of static electricity zapped him when their hands met.

"I'm sorry," the man said again, dropping his hand. "I'll look where I'm going next time." Before Ben could respond, the man added, "Good luck, wherever you're going." Considering Ben was standing in a public park, yelling at someone on the phone, it seemed like a weird thing to say.

 _Whatever. I have bigger problems,_ he thought, picking his phone up off the ground. There was a large crack in the screen, launching another round of muttered curse words. Great. And now he needed a new phone screen on top of everything else.

Fuming, Ben straightened up and resisted the urge to throw his phone at the nearest rock, because that wasn't going to do him any good. He stomped off back towards the street, realizing that the timer was ticking on his too-short lunch break, and he still wanted a slice of pizza before he had to go back into that basement. He was too caught up in his own angry anxiety spiral to pay attention to the commotion going on around him, cars honking and people yelling as something huge came rolling down the street with a bang. The last words out of Ben's mouth before it hit him were "Oh, shit."

Everything went blank for a moment. The next thing Ben knew, he was standing back at the entrance to the park, watching as someone screamed "Call 911!"

Weird. Hadn't he been standing right there a second ago? He must have walked back to the park, although he had no idea why he would have done that. There wasn't anything for him there, aside from an embarrassing moment. He started to walk back towards the Happy Time Employment Agency building, and froze when he nearly collided with someone going in the other direction.

Wait. He did collide with that person. But then he went through them.

No, they went through _him_.

What the fuck?

"Where did Poe go?" someone said behind Ben. "His reap is just wandering around. He should be here."

"He just vanished into thin air," a woman responded. "Do you think he—?"

"Oh, shit," the first speaker said, sounding awed. "He did it. He hit his quota."

"What do we do with his reap, then?"

"Hey," the man said, tapping Ben on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

Ben jumped. "You can see me?" he said, hating how much he sounded like a cliche in a horror movie. He turned to look at the speaker. It was one of the other people who had been playing frisbee in the park. Not the one who had knocked him over, though.

"Aw, I hate it when they do this," the woman said.

Were all three of them in on some weird practical joke? "I don't have time for this shit," Ben said.

The man laughed. "Buddy, all you've got right now is time," he said. Ben frowned, trying to put the pieces together. He could hear sirens now as paramedics arrived to deal with whatever commotion was going on where Ben had just been standing—

"Oh, fuck," he said, the pieces clicking into place. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

The woman sighed. "Sorry," she said. "Poe was supposed to collect your soul—"

"—collect my _what_?"

"—to help bring you to the next step in your cosmic journey, but seeing as he's completely vanished, I think you'd better come with us."

"Go where?"

"Der Waffle Haus," the man said.

Ben stared at him. "I'm dead, and you're telling me that I have to go to a Waffle House in order to move on to the next step in my 'cosmic journey,'" he said in a flat tone.

“No,” the man said. “You’re dead, and I’m telling you that you have to come to a knockoff Waffle House with us so that we can figure out what the hell to do with you.”

"And if I say no?" The effect of the question was offset by the fact that someone else walked through him.

"We're the only ones who can see you," the woman said. "What else are you going to do?" When Ben didn't respond, she smiled and held out a hand. "I'm Rose, by the way," she said. "This is Finn."

The man—Finn—cursed. "Poe had the car keys," he said to Rose. "Do you have the spare set?"

"No, I think Rey has them right now."

Finn, Rose, and a third person called Rey. Were they really the only people in the world who could see him now? He didn’t understand whatever Rose had been saying about a soul, but at this point, he was pretty sure it didn’t matter if he understood or not. Understanding the situation wasn’t going to make him any less dead.

 _Fuck my life,_ Ben thought. _Or my death, I guess._

"Shit,” Rose said, checking her pockets one last time. “I think we need to call a Lyft."

"And take the dead guy with us?" Finn asked, glancing at Ben.

"Well it's not like the Lyft driver will know that there's a third person in the back of the car with us."

 _Oh my god_ , Ben thought. _I'm dead and they're arguing about whether or not to call an Lyft to take me to a knockoff Waffle House._

Finn and Rose must have come to some agreement while he was silently contemplating what had become of his life (or, he supposed, his afterlife), because they led Ben to the other end of the park, away from where the crowds and paramedics were. "You don't need to witness that," Rose said gently. "No one should be forced to watch their own death."

"Is this what you guys do?" Ben said. "Follow dead people around?"

"Not exactly," Finn said. "I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to tell you right now. Just—can you hold on until we get to Der Waffle Haus?"

"The knockoff Waffle House, you mean?"

"Yeah. It's kind of our office."

There wasn't much else to say after that. Ben could hear Rose and Finn discussing something in hushed tones, but he wasn't paying any attention. They quieted down as soon as they piled in the Lyft, sandwiching Ben between them in the backseat of the tiny sedan (because of course he was trying to cram into a vehicle that wasn't meant for people his size while being invisible to everyone except the two people around him). "How come people can walk through me, but I'm not floating through this car?" he asked.

Finn and Rose exchanged glances that he took to mean _We’re not discussing this here_. "Rey said she has the spare car keys. She's bringing them to the meeting."

"We're gonna have to take another Lyft back to the car."

"Lost your keys, did you?" the driver chimed in.

"Something like that," Finn said. Ben wondered for the first time if there was something more to this Poe person who had disappeared into thin air. Were these people friends? Family? Or merely colleagues who just happened to be able to speak to dead people?

The ride continued in silence, Ben growing more and more anxious as it progressed. If he was dead, was he being brought to some sort of final judgement? Ben had never been particularly religious, but he found himself wondering if he'd missed something along the way. He vaguely recalled something about weighing sins, but that was all.

Unfortunately, his anxiety hadn't gotten any better in death, and by the time the Lyft pulled into the parking lot of a building with Der Waffle Haus painted on it in a tacky faux-Gothic font, he'd worked himself into a panic spiral. _You'd think that without the physical effects of anxiety, I wouldn't be able to have a panic attack,_ a detached part of his brain wondered.

Getting out of a car while invisible was just as awkward as getting into it had been. Rose took her time getting out of the it so that Ben could squeeze out behind Finn without drawing too much attention to them. "Thank you," Rose said cheerily to the driver as she closed the door once Ben was safely outside of the car.

"How does that work, anyway?" he asked. "People can walk through me, but I have to respect the physical boundaries of a car?"

"Don't think too hard about it," Finn said. "We haven't figured it out, either. And we've been dead for a while."

Ben felt his eyes widen. "You're dead like me?"

Rose elbowed Finn. "Way to have tact," she muttered.

"Death doesn't have to follow the rules of the living," Finn said, ignoring Rose. "It has its own rules. Come on."

The parking lot wasn't very full—unsurprising, considering it was now two in the afternoon and they were at a knockoff Waffle House—but there was a young woman hanging out in front of the building. "Looks like Rey beat us here," Rose said to Finn.

So this was Rey. The third person who could see him. And she was— _whoa_. Ben couldn't keep himself from looking her up and down. She wasn't short, but she was small, carrying a bag that looked like it had to weigh about half as much as she did, and she smelled vaguely of garbage. "Where's Poe?" she said by way of greeting. Ben could almost hear the _And who's the dead guy?_ she wasn't asking.

"We're not completely sure," Finn said. "We think he hit his quota."

Rey's hazel eyes widened. "No way."

If you’d asked him to explain it, Ben wouldn’t have been able to tell you what was so captivating about Rey. It certainly wasn't her clothing. Stained, ripped jeans tucked into worn black combat boots, and a lightweight jacket covered in pockets that all looked like they were full of things wasn't a good look on anyone, but somehow she managed to pull it off. (Actually, it looked a little like she was homeless, making Ben wonder if being dead meant that he was now homeless as well.)

"This was Poe’s last reap," Finn said, indicating Ben. "We didn't know what else to do, so we decided to bring him here."

"I can't believe he hit his quota," she said in an awed tone as she opened the door to Der Waffle Haus. "Unbelievable. He'd been reaping for what, six decades?"

"A century," Finn said, "but who's counting?"

Ben had stayed silent while this whole exchange was taking place, unsure of what his role in this whole thing was. "Who are you taking me to see?" he asked as they made their way to a booth in the back of the restaurant where someone was already seated.

A very, very familiar someone, although Ben hadn't seen him in about ten or so years. Not since he'd fallen off the face of the planet after Ben had left Chandrila.

"The boss," Rey said. "His name's—"

Ben couldn’t believe his eyes. "Uncle Luke?"


	2. The quota

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But despite his nearly thirty years of awkward, embarrassing moments, nothing was as awkward as the sight of Luke Skywalker looking as if he hadn't aged a day since Ben had last seen him, staring at Ben like he'd seen a ghost.
> 
> Which was accurate, actually, seeing as Ben was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> could you use a distraction right now? i could use a distraction right now. have another chapter of this au.

Ben had been present at a lot of awkward moments. For example, that time he asked out his high school crush in front of one of his friends, only to find out that said crush and friend had secretly been dating for a month. Or there was that time that he realized halfway through what he thought was a first date was actually a sales pitch to join a multi-level marketing scheme. Never mind all of the moments of “thinking that a stranger is talking to you when they’re on their phone,” “accidentally liking a stranger’s instagram photo from two years ago” and “saying ‘thanks, you too’ when a waiter says ‘enjoy your food.’”

But despite his nearly thirty years of awkward, embarrassing moments, nothing was as awkward as the sight of Luke Skywalker looking as if he hadn't aged a day since Ben had last seen him, staring at Ben like he'd seen a ghost.

Which was accurate, actually, seeing as Ben was dead.

Luke sighed and slumped back in his seat. "I was hoping that the ‘B. Solo’ on that post-it note wasn't you," he said.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ben said. "Wait a minute. Are you dead, too? Is that why no one's seen you in a decade?" _God. Talk about the Skywalker flair for the dramatic,_ he thought. Of course Luke would disappear because he died alone in the middle of the woods while trying to meditate over the best way to save the bees, or whatever.

"I think you'd better sit down," Luke said, indicating the booth. The four of them piled in, with Ben sandwiched between Finn and Rose, and Rey sitting next to Luke.

There weren't any other people in the restaurant aside from a tiny waitress wearing the biggest glasses Ben had ever seen. "How are you folks doing today?" she asked, coming over to take their order. "The usual, Luke?"

"Just a cup of coffee for me, Maz," he said. Finn ordered a cup of coffee as well, but Rose ordered a plate of french toast sticks. Ben swore that the waitress's eyes caught on him for a split second before sliding from Finn to Rose, but he had to be imagining things. Only the dead could see him, apparently, and he was pretty sure that this waitress wasn't in whatever weird “I see dead people” club these people were in.

"What the fuck, Luke?" Ben hissed as soon as Maz walked away. "I don't hear from you for ten years until the day I die, and you knew it was going to happen?"

"I didn't know for sure," Luke said gruffly. "And even if I had known, I wouldn't have been able to do anything to stop it. We don't call the shots; we collect the souls we're assigned to. That's just how it works, kiddo."

"Don't call me that," he muttered, feeling his face heat up. Despite the decade that had passed since they last spoke, Luke was already making Ben feel like he was back at his uncle’s weird hippie summer camp fifteen years ago. The last thing he needed right now was to feel like a child again, getting reprimanded by his weird uncle.

"So wait a minute," Finn said. "You two are related? What are the odds of that happening?"

"My family has a way of finding itself in the middle of these things," Luke said. "My father tried to cheat death to keep my mother alive. Death didn't accept it, but my father came pretty damn close to figuring the whole system out. I think his descendants—meaning me, Ben, and his mother—are getting punished for it."

_It fucking figures that my stupid family tried to cheat death_ , Ben thought, scowling at the table. At least the Skywalker family was about to die out, since Ben had died with exactly zero chance of having accidentally fathered a child. (Despite knowing that virginity was a social construct, he still felt pathetic when he realized he’d died without ever having had sex of any sort.) "So what happens now?" he said. "They—" he waved a hand to indicate Finn and Rose "—said that the other person, Poe, hit his quota, and now I'm supposed to replace him."

"Ah," Luke said. "The quota."

"Did you know that Poe was about to hit his?" Finn asked.

Luke shook his head. "I get the daily reaping assignments, but I don't get anything other than that. I don't know what your quotas or how close you are to hitting them, nor do I know my own."

Ben was growing more and more frustrated with his uncle for acting so goddamn calm about this whole thing. He was answering questions, sort of, but nothing was making any sense yet. As if sensing his growing anger, Rose leaned over and whispered, "We have a quota for souls that we need to reap. Once we hit that quota, we can move on."

"To the...how did you put it?” he asked. “'The next stage in your cosmic journey'?"

"Exactly," Rose said, beaming at him.

"What is that next stage?"

"Nobody knows," Rey said, speaking up for the first time. "Death has just as many rules as life, they just aren't documented anywhere."

Fucking great. Everything had changed but apparently nothing had changed and what did that even _mean_ , 'death has just as many rules as life'?

"For example," Rey said, "Right now, you're in a sort of limbo. That's why nobody besides us can see you. It'll take a day or two for things to settle down, and then you'll regain a form that the living can see and interact with. But it'll be a little different than what you're used to. You won't wear the same face to the living. Nobody from your life will recognize you, even if you're standing right in front of them."

"That does _not_ mean you should go looking for them," Luke warned him.

"What, like you?” Ben spat. “Oh wait, you died and didn't make any effort to let your family know, despite having gained a second life as a fucking grim reaper.”

"What difference would it have made?” Luke asked, shrugging. “Either way, I'm dead."

"God, you're so selfish," Ben spat. "My parents still haven't stopped hoping that you'll show up for Thanksgiving each year."

"How would you know?” Luke’s temper was starting to flare, a rare occurrence in all aspects of his life—except where Ben was concerned. Fifteen years hadn’t been enough to stop that attitude, it seemed. “ _You_ didn't even talk to them for a decade."

"Okay," Finn said loudly, before the squabbling could get any worse. "First of all, none of us need to listen to you two hash out some decade-old family drama." Luke had the decency to look slightly embarrassed, and Ben could feel his cheeks turn red. "Second of all," Finn said, "You're supposed to be giving Ben the new reaper orientation. You get the assignments. You'll be the one to know when he's ready for his first. Right?"

Luke grumbled something that Ben didn't catch, but then he seemed to pull himself together. "Right," he said. "The new reaper orientation. Congratulations, kid. You've just become a grim reaper."

"Right, we've been over that," Ben said testily. "I'm dead, and there's a quota, and we have to help people move on to wherever it is that dead people who don't become grim reapers go."

"More or less," Luke said. "There are different, shall we say, departments that reapers get assigned to. Natural causes, plague, et cetera."

"We're the 'accidents and untimely deaths' department," Rose added. "Like how you died. An accident and an untimely death."

Ben had a brief flash of the sounds of sirens and a sickening pain in his stomach, like the memory of his own death was floating just out of reach. It was probably better left there for now. "Was that how you all died?" he asked. "Accidents and untimely deaths?"

The other four people at the table exchanged glances. "More or less, yeah," Finn said. "Don't think too hard about your death. It doesn't do you any good to think about."

"Part of what we do is prepare people for their deaths," Luke said. "Do you recall a stranger touching you, shortly before your death?"

"Curly brown hair, brown eyes, the warmest smile you've ever seen," Finn said, sounding a little sad.

Ben frowned. "So your friend intentionally knocked me over, just so that he'd have an excuse to hold my hand?" Was that what that shock he'd felt when they'd touched hands had been about? And here Ben was, thinking that it was just some sort of strange sign of mutual attraction. Weird. And oddly disappointing.

"Kind of, yeah," Finn said.

"Each reaper is assigned a quota of souls that you have to reap before you’re able to move on," Luke said. "Nobody knows what the quotas are. Nobody even knows if the quota is the same for every reaper. Hence the sudden, unexpected vacancy on our team." He lowered his voice as the waitress approached, carrying two cups of coffee and a plate of french toast sticks.

"Enjoy your coffee," she said as she deposited the food at the table. She hadn't even turned away before Rey reached across the table to take one of Rose's french toast sticks.

Rose swatted her hand away. “Get your own food."

"I haven't gotten paid yet," Rey said, sounding apologetic.

"That's because you don't have a job," Rose said.

"Hey! Dumpster diving for things I can sell on Etsy is a job."

Well, that explained the smell and the bag she was carrying. She'd probably been rooting around a dumpster when she'd gotten Rose's text. Ben was intrigued by the idea of this young (or maybe not so young; he had no idea how long she'd been dead) woman rummaging around in the trash like a raccoon for things that people would willingly pay money for.

Then the implication hit him. "Even though you're dead, you still need jobs?" Being unemployed wasn’t bad enough; he had to be _dead_ and unemployed? _This day keeps getting better and better,_ he thought, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.

"Unfortunately," Finn replied. "Rose and I work at a local Vietnamese restaurant. She's a cook and I work delivery. Luke teaches yoga at a couple different rec centers." _Of course he fucking does._ "Rey sells literal trash on the internet."

“I have business cards. That makes it a valid job. See?” She pulled something out of her pocket and put it on the table in front of Ben. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pick it up in his current half-corporeal state, so he bent over the table to take a closer look at it instead.

> _Treasures from the Great Beyond_
> 
> _Breathing life back into old and forgotten homewares, furniture, and clothing_
> 
> _Kira Kenobi, CEO_
> 
> _kira@treasuresfromthegreatbeyond.com_

Ben wondered how intentional the irony of her company’s tagline was. “I thought your name was Rey?” he asked, looking back up at her.

“It is,” she said. “But legally, it’s Kira Kenobi. Rey Smith has been dead for a long time.”

That made sense, now that he thought about it. You couldn’t get a job using the social security number of a dead person. “So you have a fake identity?” _Do I get one?_ he wanted to add, already thinking of potential pseudonyms he could use.

“I have a friend of a friend who helped me set it up,” she said. “We’ve all got them. You’ll get one, too, probably. It’s getting harder and harder to get by without a legal identity.” Ben wondered again how old she actually was, if she sounded so regretful about the way the world had changed. He had a feeling it was going to take a long time to get used to the idea that someone who looked like she was a decade younger than him was actually double, maybe even triple his own age.

“We joke that Death has its own legal team working to help us forge new identities every fifteen years or so,” Rose said. “I’ve only had to change identities once, and that was a couple of years ago. I’ve only been dead since 1998.” She paused before adding, “Car crash. I hate drunk drivers.”

Ben wanted to know when and how they’d all died, but he was pretty sure it was a rude thing to ask. Even Luke hadn’t given any details about his own death, although it had to have been relatively recent. “So how does the reaping part of this job work?” he asked instead.

“Simple,” Rose explained. “Luke gets the assignments every morning. Each of us is assigned one or more souls to reap every day. We get a first initial, a last name, a time, and a location. For example, Poe’s assignment said ‘B. Solo, 1:26PM, Coldwater Gardens Park.’ We overheard you saying your name on the phone, which made it pretty easy to know that you were his reap. Not all of them are that easy, though.”

“Don’t scare him before he even starts,” Finn said dryly.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s scared or not,” Rose said at the same time that Ben said, “I’m not scared.”

“We meet here every morning for breakfast,” Luke said, ignoring Rose and Ben. “You need to be here.”

Ben didn’t want to be anywhere near Luke, even if he was one of the only people who could actually see Ben at the moment. “Why here?” he asked.

Luke shrugged. “Why not? Maz knows us, and she knows not to ask any questions.”

He knew the question was going to make him sound like a petulant kid, but he had to ask it anyway. “What happens if I don’t show up?”

Luke’s gaze darkened for a moment. “You’re not going to do that,” he said, fixing Ben with the sort of intense gaze he always used to give him when Ben spent his summers at Luke’s commune, learning to meditate and “be at one” with nature. Hippie bullshit, in Ben’s opinion, but his opinion had never mattered to Han and Leia. “You don’t have a choice.”

Ben glared, but he didn’t argue. What was the point? He couldn’t reverse the events of this afternoon. “What do you do between reaps?” he asked instead.

The other four people at the table exchanged glances and shrugged. “Work,” Finn said. “Try to act like normal, living people while also trying to stay under-the-radar and not draw any attention to ourselves.”

“Where do you all live?” If he couldn’t go back and see Leia, he had no place to sleep. He’d never slept on the streets before, but considering his current status as “transitioning from the living to the dead,” it wasn’t like anyone was going to rob him in his sleep.

“Finn, Poe, and I share an apartment,” Rose said. “You can crash there until you get on your feet.” Her tone of voice made Ben wonder if Rose, Poe, and Finn had been something a little different than “just friends.” Or maybe that was what happened when you were dead, you were bound together with your fellow grim reapers in some sort of morbid camaraderie.

Jesus, Ben hoped that he never fell into that sort of pattern with anyone.

Rey and Luke were both suspiciously silent. There was no way in hell Ben was going to ask Luke if he could couchsurf with him. Rey, on the other hand…

Actually, maybe it was for the best that he didn’t try to crash with her. Something about her made him nervous. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Just in the way that attractive people made him nervous, like he was going to say words in the wrong order and make a total idiot of himself.

Again: see literally every interaction Ben had ever had with someone attractive, right up until his death.

“I think I’ll take you up on that,” he said to Rose, nodding slowly. “If that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Finn said. Ben couldn’t tell if the hint of reluctance he detected was actually there, or if he was just imagining it. It couldn’t have been easy on them to lose their friend (or whatever Poe had been to them) and get stuck with Ben instead.

* * *

Finn and Rose lived in an old attic apartment a little ways outside of downtown Chandrila. Ben had never been to this part of the city before, and it was obvious why. It wasn’t a total shithole, but there definitely wasn’t anything special about it. “Sorry about the mess,” Finn said as he led Ben into the apartment. “Rey has been storing her stuff here.”

Ben looked around at the stacks of old furniture, books, housewares, and boxes full of smaller things. It was an eclectic combination of things, and he wondered where she could possibly find all of it if her only source was dumpster diving. “She doesn’t store it in her apartment?”

Rose and Finn exchanged glances. “It’s not an option for her,” Finn said.

He could tell that there was more to it than that, but it wasn’t any of his business how Rey lived. Besides, this gave him an excuse to get a better insight about her without worrying about tripping over his own tongue in front of her. “Do you guys get to keep any of it?” he asked.

“Most of it, no,” Rose said as she made her way into another room. “But if we ask her for something specific, she’ll usually find it for us.” Finn disappeared into a third room, leaving Ben standing alone in the living room.

Rose stuck her head out of the room she was in and said to Ben, “You can stay in Poe’s room,” There was an implied _for now_ , and he wondered again what relationship she, Finn, and Poe had. Or had had. “You might not be able to sleep until you settle down into a solid form again, though. You’re basically a ghost right now. I know my first couple of days, I couldn’t sleep or eat. Poe always said that he mostly slept through his ghost days, but he died during a piloting training accident during World War I, so I think he was happy to have a break from war.”

A drunk driver in 1998, a WWI pilot, and then whatever had happened to Ben (he was fairly certain he’d been impaled on runaway construction equipment) in 2019. He was curious about Luke’s death. Given his uncle’s way of life, it either had to do with a hallucinogenic-related accident or he’d been stung to death while trying to save the bees. Either way, the least Luke could have done was find a way to inform his family of his death. Ben was a pretty shitty son, but he’d at least have made the effort if his parents hadn’t already known he was dead.

“For what it’s worth,” Rose said quietly, knocking Ben out of his thoughts about his fucked-up family, “I’m sorry you died the way you did, and I’m sorry you have to stick around here instead of moving on to the afterlife.” And even though Ben felt like an interloper because he’d completely replaced her friend (or boyfriend?), she sounded so sincere that it made his heart melt a little bit.

“I’m sorry that Poe is gone, and now you’re stuck with me,” he replied, hoping that he sounded as sincere as she did. Rose smiled sadly at him, then left the room, closing the door behind him.

Ben looked around at the belongings of a man who had been dead for a century. Some books, a couple of framed posters on the wall, a bed, a desk, and a chair. He wondered if Rey was going to sell any of it, now that Poe wasn’t around.

What was Leia going to do with his things? Ben didn’t have much, not after burning his life down and turning tail to move across the country back to his hometown. When he moved back, his old bedroom had still been the same, like a time capsule from his teenage years. He’d never realized that Han and Leia were so sentimental until then, and he’d been surprised that that knowledge made him feel such a complicated jumble of emotions. What were they going to do now that Ben was dead? Had they been informed yet?

_No, stop thinking about that,_ he told himself. _You’re just going to drive yourself crazy trying to change something that can’t be changed._ He needed to let the past die along with Ben Solo.

With a sigh, he flopped down on Poe’s bed, only mildly surprised to find that he didn’t just fall through it like the ghost he was. Tomorrow, he’d start figuring out his next steps. But for tonight, he was just going to try to sleep in a stranger’s bed and not think too hard about the physics of being a ghost.


	3. Grim reaper orientation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ben, you shadow Rey today,” Luke said.
> 
> It made sense. He’d shadowed Finn yesterday and Rose the day before, hovering awkwardly as the living walked through him. He’d been equal parts hoping he’d get to shadow Rey and dreading the thought of it. Developing a crush on one of the only people who knew he was dead was a terrible way to start the afterlife, but then again, Ben had never made a smart decision in his life. Why start in death?
> 
> “That doesn’t answer my question,” Ben said as the other three reapers read the notes on their post-its.
> 
> “I’m taking you thrift shopping,” Rey said without looking up. “And then once you get a job, you’re buying me breakfast as a thank-you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it occurred to me that the last chapter may have implied that rey is homeless or that ben is about to be homeless. no one is or will be homeless in this fic. just wanted to state that in case that's a trigger for anyone.

Ben knew he’d settled into his new grim reaper form two days after he died when he looked in the mirror and saw a face he didn’t recognize. As a ghost, his reflection had been invisible, and he’d been warned that reapers’ appearances to humans changed a little bit. It was still jarring to see a face that was just different enough from his own to be uncanny. The weirdest part, however, was the fact that Ben missed his own reflection. He’d never given much thought about his physical attractiveness, but he found that he missed his own jumble of mismashed features.

He received further confirmation of this when he, Rose, and Finn showed up at Der Waffel Haus that morning and Maz asked him for his order. She didn’t seem surprised that the crew of reapers had a new member, but then again, Ben could have sworn that she’d known he was there even when he was invisible to the living. “Glad to see you’re settling in, kid,” Luke said by way of greeting.

Ben resisted the urge to tell him to fuck off and instead focused on a bigger issue. “Am I allowed to steal from myself?” he asked. “Because I have no money and these are the only clothes I currently own.” Borrowing Poe’s clothes wasn’t an option; he’d been considerably smaller than Ben was. So as far as he could tell, breaking into Leia’s house to steal his own clothes was his best course of action at the moment.

Luke, Finn, and Rose looked at Rey. There was some sort of silent conversation going on as the four of them exchanged glances, then they seemed to come to a conclusion when Luke opened the notebook he was holding and handed Rose, Finn, and Rey each a post-it note with something written on it. “Ben, you shadow Rey today,” he said.

It made sense. He’d shadowed Finn yesterday and Rose the day before, hovering awkwardly as the living walked through him. He’d been equal parts hoping he’d get to shadow Rey and dreading the thought of it. Developing a crush on one of the only people who knew he was dead was a terrible way to start the afterlife, but then again, Ben had never made a smart decision in his life. Why start in death?

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Ben said as the other three reapers read the notes on their post-its.

“I’m taking you thrift shopping,” Rey said without looking up. “And then once you get a job, you’re buying me breakfast as a thank-you.”

“Does that mean I get a fake identity?” He hadn’t meant to sound as excited as he did, but having a fake identity sounded like something out of a spy movie, fulfilling nine-year-old Ben’s fantasy of being James Bond when he grew up.

“I’ll have it for you tomorrow,” Luke said, sipping his coffee. “Along with your first reap.”

His first reap. Ben still wasn't completely sure how he felt about that. Rose and Finn had explained that death was a necessary fact of life and that grim reapers existed to make the transition from life to death easier on everyone, particularly people like them, who had died suddenly and traumatically. He recognized that he didn't have a choice, however, so he was refusing to let himself think about it too much. Generally speaking, Ben didn’t care if someone lived or died, but it was uncomfortable to have to look at someone and know that they only had minutes left to live.

"Okay," he said, looking at Rey. "Yeah. I think I can agree to that. I have to warn you, though, I'm not an easy person to shop with." He had a sudden mental image of himself surrounded by piles of ill-fitting clothing twenty years out of style. He was in for a long day and an embarrassing time until he was able to buy real clothes again.

"Don't be so sure," Finn said. "Rey can find anything you're looking for. It's her superpower."

"Isn't being dead a superpower?" Ben asked. "No aging, sickness, injuries, or hangovers." He’d been thinking a lot over the past few days about the physics and biology of being dead. Not that he was a scientist or anything, but he was pretty sure that dead people weren't supposed to have beating hearts. Judging by the way that his sped up later on that day as Rey led him down the street, that part of death was untrue.

"Finn's exaggerating," she explained. "I just know where to look, that's all. It's not a superpower."

"Because of your work?"

She looked over at him, an unreadable expression on her face. Did she think he was judging her? "Yeah," she said. "Something like that. I've always been good at finding lost things that are still valuable. That's a skill that never goes out of style, unlike some. Delivering Vietnamese take-out? That job is only going to be around for so long before we're all replaced by robots."

"So you've been doing the same thing since you died?" _Don't ask her when or how she died,_ he reminded himself. _That's rude, even if you're dying to know._

Dying to know. What a phrase.

"I guess, yeah," Rey said, bringing Ben back to the present. "It's changed over time, of course. It used to be mostly flea markets. Now I've got the internet, and that's helped a lot. It’s made some things difficult, as well."

"Such as?"

"Kinda hard to open up an Etsy store without an identity," she said. "Or register a domain name. It’s made a little easier by the fact that Kira Kenobi is a US citizen, though, so I don't need to figure out how to set up a UK bank account from over here."

That explained the faint accent. _She must have come over a while ago if she sounds this American,_ Ben thought. "Isn't it difficult to maintain a fake identity? How do you guys do it?"

"We," she corrected. "You're one of us now, too, remember?" She stopped in front of a storefront that had mannequins modeling clothing in a window. "Come on, this is our first stop."

Ben had never entered a thrift store in his entire life. He was expecting to walk into some big warehouse-style store with old, mismatched clothing smelling vaguely of mothballs and body odor hanging on racks all over the place. Instead, the shop was well-lit, and there seemed to be some sort of order to the clothing. "I've found some really nice things here," Rey whispered as she led him through the store. "It's just off of a really rich neighborhood, so they get a lot of clothing donations for high-end brands. The owner is a little snobby, though."

Rey helped him look through the racks, finding things to wear. Ben felt like a little kid, needing the help finding something to wear and having to borrow money to pay for it. She seemed to get more and more comfortable with him as they moved from that store to another, and by the third store, she was throwing truly awful items at him to try on. "I am not wearing a sweater that screams 'I'm from the 90s' as loudly as this one," he said as she held up a garishly patterned garment.

She laughed. "I dare you to try it."

"Not happening."

"Come on, Ben," she said, waving the sweater. "Live a little."

"It's a little late for that, isn't it?" he said dryly.

She snorted, finally putting the disaster of a garment down. "Okay, that's fair.” Her phone chimed, and she frowned when she looked at it. "We have to get going," she said. "I have to be halfway across town for my reap soon."

By the time they were finished, she'd helped Ben find a pair of jeans, a jacket, three shirts, and a pair of sweatpants. "You can't buy socks and underwear from a thrift store," she said as they waited at a bus stop. "We'll stop at a Walmart or something on the way back."

"Thank you for doing this for me," he murmured. "Really. I'd be completely lost otherwise."

The resulting smile she gave him was enough to make him wonder if it really was all that bad to be dead, if she was around. "It's no problem," she said. "We've all been there. It's a pretty shit job, to be honest. Perks aren't terrible—I would be dead many times over by now thanks to all of the times I've fallen and gotten injured while scavenging in dumpsters and landfills—but it's lonely to look around and know that you can never be a part of it all again." She sounded so sad for a minute that he wondered if he should, like, give her a hug or something. Would that be too much? They didn't really know each other.

Although, considering she was teasing him with ugly sweaters, maybe that meant they were becoming friends. He sure hoped so.

Before he could figure out the hugging thing, a bus arrived, and Rey tugged at his sleeve to prompt him to board it. "Sorry," she whispered once they were seated in the back of the bus. "I shouldn't scare you like that."

“I’m not scared,” he said quietly. “But even if I was, would it matter? I’m already, you know. Here.”

“You’re remarkably calm about this,” she said. “Especially considering your uncle is our boss.”

Ben grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Rey must have realized that she’d overstepped, because she whispered an apology, and the conversation died. After a couple of minutes of silence, he let his gaze slide over to watch her while she stared out the window. _What’s your story?_ he wondered. _Can I be a part of it?_

Wait. No. No sense in getting attached, even if she did seem like she was warming up to him. From what Ben could tell, any of them could be pulled into “the great beyond” (or whatever it was) any day, since their quotas were a mystery. And anyway, even if he did say something, she’d probably tell him that he’d misunderstood her intentions, and then things would be awkward for the rest of eternity. It wasn’t like they had anywhere else to go, and Ben wasn’t sure if it was possible to request a transfer to another department of reapers.

Although… “You’re not from around here originally,” he said. She turned to give him a questioning look. “Do you move around often? Is that allowed?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “I’ve never said no when they’ve reassigned me. I didn’t want to leave the place I was from when I was alive, but after I died, it didn’t matter if—” She cut herself off, leaving Ben to wonder what she’d been about to say. “Anyway, if you’d rather stay in Chandrila for all of eternity, it’s probably fine. Most reapers I’ve met haven’t moved much.” She paused, as if considering her next words. “It’s frowned upon, and if Luke asks, I never told you this, but reapers often stay in the cities they lived in so that they can keep an eye on the people they left behind.”

“But I thought they wouldn’t recognize us?” he asked, thinking about the new face he now wore for the living to see.

“They don’t,” she said, “except for Halloween.”

“Why, what happens on Halloween?”

“It’s the day that the veil between life and death is thinnest,” she whispered. “It’s the one day of the year that we wear our true faces. Luke and Rose have to wear masks because their deaths were relatively recent.”

“I’m starting to feel glad that I didn’t have many people that I left behind.” The moment the words left his mouth, he realized how pathetic that sounded. He’d died alone at the age of 29 after getting impaled on runaway construction equipment. He’d been living with his mother, and the only job he’d been able to find was at a shitty temp agency.

These were all things that he really didn’t want Rey to know about him.

To his surprise, however, Rey placed a hand on his arm in a gesture of comfort that Ben was not used to receiving from anyone. “I died alone, too,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

Half of her mouth quirked up in response. “Me, too,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Come on. This is our stop.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, they were loitering outside of a skyscraper. They’d figured out that Rey’s reap was a middle-aged man dressed in an ill-fitting suit from the way someone—a friend or a colleague, it was unclear—had called out to him from the second floor window. The man was yelling into what Ben assumed was a Bluetooth earpiece. Either that, or he was screaming at the air in front of him. It reminded Ben uncomfortably of his own final moments.

“I’m not sure how much Finn and Rose explained,” Rey said as they watched the man grow angrier and angrier. “You see the round little birds?”

“Porgs,” Ben said, watching the big-eyed creatures climbing on cars, window ledges, telephone poles, and anything else that they could manage. “They kill people, right? But only we can see them.”

“Not exactly,” Rey said. “Watch.” They leaned against the building in silence, the minutes ticking down to the time on Rey’s post-it. “Almost time,” she muttered, pushing herself off of the wall. “Stay here.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and made a show of staring at it as she hurried down the street, bumping into the man along the way and knocking his phone and his stack of papers out of his hand. Ben heard her apologizing loudly, noting the way she grabbed his hand in a clumsy attempt to help him pick up his things. There was a tiny flash of light, then she was on her way down the street. She wasn’t...she wasn’t abandoning Ben, was she? He had no way to get home without her, not unless he wanted to walk across the city.

_Watch,_ he told himself. _Don’t make any assumptions about her motives. Not yet._ The porgs were distracting enough to keep him occupied. It was bizarre that there was this whole other world hiding from the living. The most distracting part of the porgs was how adorable they were. “The cutest troublemakers in existence,” Finn had said yesterday when he’d pointed them out to Ben.

Rey’s reap was still grumbling into his phone, his things now held in a clumsy bundle in his arms. The breeze suddenly picked up into a gust, knocking a few papers free. The man cursed and started to chase his papers down the sidewalk.

What he couldn’t see was the fact that it wasn’t really the wind’s fault. It was the porgs. Three of them had converged on the man, pulling some of his things free, and they were now running through an intersection. The man was chasing blindly behind, and Ben suddenly knew how he was going to die. A screech of tires and the slam of a body hitting the windshield of a car confirmed his suspicions, and a minute later, Rey was returning to where Ben was still leaning against the building, her reap looking bewildered as he followed behind her. “Did you watch them?” she asked Ben.

He nodded, eyeing the ghost warily. Even though he was no longer part of the living, was he allowed to know about reaper business? _Death has just as many rules as life,_ Rey had said on Ben’s deathday. _They just aren’t documented anywhere._

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” the reap said, looking between Rey and Ben.

“Yep,” Rey said. “Sorry.”

“I can’t believe I died chasing a financial report down the sidewalk,” the man said. “I never wanted to be one of those people who was that consumed by his job.”

Ben could sympathize. His job had become his identity while working at First Order Enterprises, and having that ripped away from him had been the start of his downfall. If he’d stuck it out there, would he still have died three days ago?

_Doesn’t matter. Let the past die._ It was quickly becoming his new mantra.

“Come with us,” Rey said to the man. “We can lead you to the next phase of your existence.” This was the part of the job that Ben found the most curious, probably because it was something that was forbidden for reapers to see.

There were two steps to the reaping process: touching a reap just before they died so that their soul could be released from their body, and leading the soul to their gate to the great beyond. Reapers could only glance the faintest outline, but they could see enough to know that everyone’s gateway looked different. Rey’s reap’s gate, for example, was just a simple pearly white elevator. He looked nervously back at Rey and Ben before stepping into it, and then he and the elevator disappeared.

“Well, then,” Rey said, turning to face Ben. “That’s today’s job done. They’re not always that easy. Finn got arrested once trying to get to his reap in time. She was surrounded by bodyguards, and they didn’t take well to a stranger trying to touch her.”

“How did he get out of jail?”

“We’re still not completely sure,” she said. “We think that Death pulled some strings, because suddenly the cops forgot all about his crime and let him go.”

“So being dead gives you a literal ‘get out of jail free’ card?” Maybe Ben could break into Leia’s house and steal his old things after all.

Rey shot him a stern look. “That does _not_ mean that you should treat this like _The Purge_.”

He debated telling her what he was actually considering, then decided against it. He’d be fine for now, thanks to her thrift store scavenging abilities. “So what now?” he asked instead.

“Now?” she asked, pulling her bus pass out of her pocket. “We head back to Der Waffle Haus.”

“Why?” he asked, following her to the bus stop. “And why do we have to take the bus everywhere? Don’t you have a car?”

“Rose is the only one with a car, and that’s because Finn needs it to work delivery. I can borrow it every once in a while when he’s not working, but usually it’s just easier to take the bus. Taking an Uber everywhere adds up real fast.”

_Note to self: buy car._ He wasn’t sure how easy that was going to be using a fake identity—not to mention how he was going to pay for a car—but their team of grim reapers needed more than a single car split between five people. “Isn’t that inconvenient if you have to be somewhere at a particular time for a reap? What if your reap is due to die ten minutes after Luke gives you the assignment, and you’re half an hour away?”

Her lips quirked up in a half smile. “You ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

_Is she making fun of me?_ he wondered. He could already feel his face heating up, his brain scrambling to come up with a witty retort, but she was already getting on the bus to take them back downtown.


	4. Kylo Ren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn stared at Luke for another moment before turning back to Ben. “So, I guess that means you’re coming with me today. I don’t have to be at work until four.”
> 
> “What do we do until then?” Ben asked.
> 
> “‘We’?” Finn asked. “Buddy, you’re going job hunting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to [DuckDuckGo](https://duckduckgo.com) because i hate to think what google would say about me if they it tracked my search history from researching for this fic.

Ben was almost used to the knockoff Waffle House breakfast routine by the fourth day. Wake up knowing that he was taking up someone else’s space, fold himself into the backseat of Rose’s 20-year-old Subaru that reeked of fish sauce and frying oil, and drive to Der Waffle Haus, where Luke and Rey were always already waiting.

This morning, Rey greeted Ben with a blinding smile. “I have your fake identity,” she said, holding up an envelope. “Don’t forget that you owe me breakfast as soon as you get a job.”

“I will buy you all the coffee and french toast sticks you want,” he promised as he took the envelope from her and pulled out the new ID. He examined the photograph and info on it, frowning. “The fuck kind of name is Kylo Ren?”

Rose, Finn, and Rey all laughed. Even Luke seemed like he was trying to hold back a grin. “Come on,” Ben said, dropping the ID on the table. “Really? You guys couldn’t get me a more normal name?”

“It’s not up to us,” Rey said, shrugging. “I didn’t ask to be Kira Kenobi.”

“What about the rest of you?” Ben asked. “Surely you have fake names, too?” There was no way that Luke was using his real name in Chandrila.

“Sure,” Finn said. “Legally, I’m Jake Pentecost.”

“Kaitlin Le,” Rose said.

Luke shrugged. “Jim van Pire.” Even Luke had a better fake name than Ben. Life was so unfair.

(Or, rather, death.)

“Look at it this way,” Finn said. “You only have to be Kylo Ren for the next couple of decades, and then you’ll get a new identity if you haven’t hit your quota yet. True me,” he added, exchanging looks with Rey. “The time flies after a while.” Ben had gathered that Finn and Rey were both older than Rose and Luke, but neither of them had said when or how they’d died, and he still hadn’t figured out a good way to ask.

“Besides,” added Luke. “Now you can get a job, like you wanted. Of course, reaping takes priority over everything else. Work, sleep, fun. Do _not_ miss an appointment.”

“Is reaping important? I hadn’t realized,” Ben snapped. He was getting really sick of the reminder of the roles that the grim reapers had to play in the circle of life. He may have been unhappy about the situation, but that didn’t mean he didn’t understand the importance of the job.

Luke didn’t take the bait as he flipped open his notebook and handed each of them a post-it. _C. Lakatos, 5025 State Street, 2:47 PM,_ said Ben’s. Even though it had seemed simple enough when Rose, Finn, and Rey had all done it, he was still a bit nervous about having to reap his first soul. Ben was sure that Luke was supposed to help train him, too, but his uncle seemed to be too cowardly to face him without anyone else around as a buffer. Which was fine by Ben, honestly. He’d rather hang out with the other reapers anyway.

“Where’s your reap?” Finn asked, leaning over to look at Ben’s post-it. “Oh, that’s nearly where mine is, at almost the same time. Same last name, too.” He looked up at Luke. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“You forget,” Luke said as he closed his notebook. “I’m merely the messenger. Death is the one that makes the assignments. I just hand them out.”

Finn stared at Luke for another moment before turning back to Ben. “So, I guess that means you’re coming with me today. I don’t have to be at work until four.”

“What do we do until then?” Ben asked.

“‘We’?” Finn asked. “Buddy, _you’re_ going job hunting.”

And that was how Ben found himself standing at the Happy Time Employment Agency front desk two hours later, filling out an application for the second time in the past week.

Armitage Hux was no less disconcerting the second time around, but at least this time, Ben had the sense to not act like a total dick. He couldn’t bring himself to go so far as to compliment the many cat photos that Hux had hanging all over his cubicle, but he at least made an effort to give more than one- or two-word answers. After about twenty minutes of questioning, Hux put the clipboard down and said, “I have the perfect job for you.” In sharp contrast to the way he’d said the words to Ben Solo, he sounded positively delighted when talking to Kylo Ren. Ben took that to mean that he wasn’t going to be thrown in the mildewy basement again.

They didn’t have to walk far for Hux’s “perfect job.” In fact, he stuck Ben in the empty cubicle next to his. “We’ll just start you with some basic data entry,” he said, taking out some forms and sheets of paper for Ben to look at. “I’ll get Dopheld to help get your account set up. Welcome to Happy Time Employment Agency, Mr Ren. Or Kylo? Can I call you Kylo?”

Ben nodded, still unused to the strange alias he’d been given. “Wonderful,” Hux said, beaming. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”

* * *

Finn picked him up just after two, when Ben took his lunch break. “I take it you got something figured out?” he asked when Ben got in the car.

“Data entry,” Ben said with a grimace. “I have an MBA from Stanford, and I’m stuck doing data entry at a temp agency.”

_“Ben Solo_ has an MBA from Stanford,” Finn corrected. “Kylo Ren does not.”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to that name.”

Finn shrugged. “You’d be surprised how quickly you get used to these things.”

“Things like needing to spend my lunch break reaping someone’s soul?”

“Exactly.”

It was unclear whether or not he’d be expected to spend all of his lunch breaks reaping souls. “What if my reap is too far to do on a lunch break?” he asked. “Or if it’s at a weird time where I can’t take a lunch break?”

“We all wrestle with that,” Finn said. “Sometimes you can say there was a traffic accident that made you late. If it’s going to take a significant amount of time, claim you have an appointment somewhere. Or take a sick day. If you stay on your manager’s good side, you can usually get away with more.”

Ben made a mental note to go find some cat photos to hang at his new desk. Judging by the crowded display in Hux’s workspace, he’d be thrilled to have another cat lover to talk to.

5025 State Street was an unremarkable house on the east side of town. “What could possibly kill someone here?” Ben murmured to Finn as they scanned the area. “It’s a residential street that doesn’t get much traffic, and there’s no one around.”

Finn pointed at the clock. “We still have time. A lot can happen in fifteen minutes. Check the mailboxes; see if any of them say Lakatos.”

“Won’t we look sketchy doing that?”

“That’s what this is for,” Finn said, pulling out a cardboard box the size of a textbook. “Pretend you’re trying to deliver a package. See how this is covered in shipping labels?” He held it up for Ben to examine. “Don’t make a big deal out of it, obviously, but if you look like you know what you’re doing, you won’t stick out too much. I have a theory that being grim reapers means we automatically fade into the background more easily, but Luke says that’s bullshit.”

They got out of the car, but before they could get too far with checking mailboxes, a truck with the words _Lakatos Family Movers_ emblazoned on the side pulled up to 5025 State Street. “Aha,” Finn said under his breath. “There we go. And we still have—” He checked his phone “—seven minutes to go.”

“They’re going to die by runaway furniture?”

“Looks like it,” Finn said, putting his phone back in his pocket. “Come on. Let’s see if they need some help.”

Ben wasn’t sure if professional movers would accept help from a couple of strangers, but the man and the woman who got out of the truck took one look at Ben and Finn and nodded eagerly. “I’m Christina,” the woman said, “and he’s Nick.”

_Okay,_ Ben thought. _I’ve got the woman, and Finn has the man._ “Four minutes to go,” Finn whispered to Ben as they carried a bulky table to the van. “Now’s the time to do it. A five-minute window is best.” He ignored the porgs that had started to converge on the house, climbing on the furniture and opening the boxes stacked on the porch.

On the next trip into the house to grab a box, Ben found an excuse to “accidentally” grab Christina’s hand while taking a heavy box labeled _COOKBOOKS_ from her. “Sorry about that,” he said. He was almost afraid he was going to mess this up somehow, like there was an extra step between “Find your reap” and “Touch them to release their soul from their body,” but all that happened was a slight _click_ , like unlocking a door. A minute later, there was a loud crash as Nick tripped over something that a porg had knocked out of one of the boxes. He fell backwards, hitting his head on the corner of the porch railing. The couch he had been helping Christina carry slipped from his grasp in the process, crushing her.

Ben cringed at the sound of the _crunch_ of Nick’s skull cracking on the wood. “At least they both died instantly,” Finn said, coming to stand next to Ben. “Sometimes it isn’t that quick.”

“Did they really need to send both of us?” he asked. “Couldn’t you have done both?”

“Normally, yes,” Finn said. “But you’re still new to this. You can’t say you’d have preferred to do your first reap alone, could you?”

Ben had no argument for that.

Within a couple of minutes, the sound of the accident had attracted the attention of the neighbors, and by the time an ambulance was pulling up to the house, Finn and Ben were leading Nick and Christina away from the scene. “This is so embarrassing,” Christina said. “Grandpa always said that it was a bad idea to start our own moving company.”

“Could have been worse,” Nick said. “Remember that guy who got impaled by runaway construction equipment last week? That sounds way more painful.”

Finn snorted. Ben got that sharp, painful feeling in his stomach again, like something was being shoved through it. It was odd, getting this echo of his own death. “Don’t worry about him,” Finn said as he started to lead Nick away. “I hear he’s doing just fine now that he’s dead. And so will you, once you go through your gate into the afterlife.”

Ben could see the light growing bigger and bigger as Christina’s gate came into view. “Did you know we were going to die?” she asked as she followed Ben down the street.

“Yes.” He didn’t see the point in lying to her. “But I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

She sighed. “Well, this sucks. I had so many more things I wanted to do before I died.”

He had no idea what to say to that. He’d had things he wanted to do before he died, too, but at least now he had a second chance, of a sort. “I don’t know what’s waiting beyond that gate,” he said, pointing at it, “but maybe you’ll find the answers there.”

“You can’t give me any hints?” she asked, stepping in front of the gate.

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Well,” she said. “Here goes nothing, I guess.” She stepped through the gate and a second later, it burned out, leaving Ben alone on the sidewalk.

* * *

Hux made a snide comment about Ben’s long lunch break when he got back to the office, but Ben decided to take Finn’s advice and ask Hux about the most prominent cat photo he had on his desk. “Oh, her?” Hux said, picking up the framed photograph to smile at it. “This is Millicent. She’s one of my cats. I have six.”

_Dear god,_ Ben thought. _My boss is a crazy cat lady._ Hux was easily distracted by Ben’s cat questions, and before long, he’d completely forgotten about Ben’s hour-long lunch break. As soon as five o’clock rolled around, he said, “Oh, look at the time! I’ve got to go home so that I can feed Millicent. She gets so cranky if I don’t give her her kibble on time. See you tomorrow, Kylo.” As soon as Hux was out the door, Ben packed up his things and started to make his way back to Der Waffle Haus. Finn had asked Ben to head there after work, even though he and Rose started their shift at Pho King Great an hour ago.

By the time he got to Der Waffle Haus, the dinner rush (or what passed for a dinner rush at a knockoff breakfast chain) was in full swing. Even though the restaurant was fuller than Ben was used to seeing it, the table that the reapers always took in the back was empty. Maz was on duty, as always, and she greeted Ben warmly when he walked in. “I’m sure one of your friends will be here soon,” she said, “but you can head on back to your usual table. I’ll be by in a minute to take your order.” He wasn’t going to get paid for at least a week and a half, but if Luke showed up, Ben would just put something on his tab.

He was still reading the menu when someone sat down across from him. “How did your first reap go?” Luke asked.

Ben put the menu down on the table, deciding to order home fries as soon as Maz came back. “It was fine,” he said to Luke. “Finn and I found them easily enough, and no one made a fuss about being dead.”

“Good, good,” Luke said, nodding. “And the job?”

Ben grimaced. “Kylo Ren is the newest Happy Time Employment Agency employee.”

“So you’re settling in, then?”

How was Luke able to act like this was something totally normal, and that he and Ben didn’t have a history that had yet to be hashed out? “What is this, some sort of interview?” Ben shot back.

But of course, Luke being Luke, he barely reacted. “I’m just trying to make sure your transition into being a grim reaper is as smooth as possible.”

“It’s fucking great. I have a fake identity, a shitty job, no money, no car, and no home.” Finding a place to live was the next thing on his priority list. Well, after he bought Rey that breakfast he owed her.

Luke paused before saying, “You’re not still thinking of tracking down…”

_Coward,_ Ben thought. _He can’t even say his own sister’s name._ “She’s better off now that her failure of a son isn’t taking up space in her house.” Ben couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone. He wasn’t sure if the knowledge of where he’d been in life would ever feel less embarrassing.

Curiously, Luke did seem to flinch at that. “You’re not a failure, Ben,” he said.

“I beg to fucking differ,” Ben spat. “I burned my life down and had to move across the country because the only place I had left to go was the hometown I never wanted to step foot in again. An unemployed 29-year-old moving back in with his mother sure sounds like a failure to me.”

“Your parents love—loved—you very much.”

Ben could feel his insides twisting with discomfort. This was even worse than thinking about being impaled to death. “Yeah? Well they had a funny way of showing it all those years when they sent me off to live with you.” When he hadn’t been at boarding school, he’d been at Luke’s camp in the summer. Winter holidays were the only times that Han and Leia could be counted on to be around for him. “If Death loves fucking with Skywalkers, at least there’s only one left.”

“Are you sure about that?”

_Oh my god. I think my uncle is asking me if there’s a chance I have an illegitimate child._ “Unless I have a cousin or a sibling that I don’t know about, yes.”

Luke seemed to realize what he’d implied as soon as Ben did, and he didn’t press the subject. “Dinner is on me tonight,” he said as Maz approached the table. “Order whatever you like, kiddo.”

“Please stop calling me that.”

* * *

The next couple of weeks were uneventful. Ben got his first paycheck and immediately purchased a cheap cell phone and then proceeded to scour Craigslist for apartments in central Chandrila. “Why is rent so expensive here?” he wondered aloud at breakfast one morning. “Considering the size of Chandrila, these places are asking a lot.”

“Why don’t you find a roommate?” Rose asked.

“If I’m trying to avoid getting too involved with the living, shouldn’t I avoid becoming roommates with one?” Not to mention the fact that Ben hadn’t lived with a roommate since he was a teenager.

Rose and Finn had another one of the silent conversations that they seemed to excel in. It was making Ben feel more and more left out, which in turn made him feel more and more desperate to stop taking up space in their apartment. “Rey,” Finn said, turning to look at her.

Her eyes flickered between Finn, Rose, and Ben. “What is it?” Her tone was guarded, like she was preparing for a conversation she didn’t want to have.

“How are things with your landlord?”

Ben watched as Rey’s face cycled through a number of expressions before settling on something caged. “Why?”

“Rose and I have been talking,” Finn said, “and now that Poe’s gone, we want to get an apartment with just the two of us.” Ben was unsurprised to hear that they’d been planning on kicking him out soon.

“Okay,” Rey said. “And?”

“And we’re going to need you to get all your shit out of our apartment. Sorry, but it’s time. You need to find a better storage space.”

She nodded slowly, digesting the conversation. “Thank you for telling me,” she said slowly. “I’ll figure something out.”

“Actually,” Rose said, raising an eyebrow at Ben. “Since Ben’s looking for an apartment, maybe you two could find something together. A two-bedroom apartment split between two people is much cheaper than a one-bedroom or a studio apartment. And as an added bonus, you’d have someplace stable to store your recovered furniture and whatnot.”

Was Rey actually homeless? Was that why everyone was so cagey about why she stored her stuff at Rose, Finn, and Poe’s place? “I don’t know,” Rey said, looking at Ben. “I’m not the best roommate. I bring literal garbage home at all hours of the day and night.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I’d rather live with you than with some stranger from Craigslist. At least I wouldn’t have to live with someone calling me ‘Kylo’ all the time.”

To his surprise, her expression opened up. “You’re serious?”

“Garbage and all,” Ben said, shrugging. “Why not?” _There are a million reasons why this is a bad idea and you know it,_ he told himself. _Like the part where you don’t want to get too attached to someone who could vanish at any moment. Or the part where you have no experience living with anyone aside from your parents. Or the part where she’ll bring actual trash home on a regular basis._ The words were already out of his mouth, however, and it was too late to backtrack now that his anxiety was bringing up so many valid points.

A slow smile grew on Rey’s face. Ben didn’t have the heart to not smile back. “Okay,” she said. “Yeah. Let’s do this. Let’s be roommates.”

_I have a bad feeling about this,_ Ben thought. _Oh well._ “You want to go apartment hunting today?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jake Pentecost is the name of John Boyega’s character in Pacific Rim Uprising.
> 
> Kaitlin Le is the name of Kelly Marie Tran’s character on the podcast [Passenger List](https://passengerlist.org/) (which I highly recommend!)
> 
> Jim the Vampire (Jim van Pire) is a character Mark Hamill played in an episode of What We Do in the Shadows.
> 
> this is the last fully written chapter of this au that i have, so it may be a while before this updates again - i do ultimately plan on finishing it but it's not on my wip priority list at the moment, so i won't pick it back up until i finish something else.

**Author's Note:**

> and yes, they actually do meet in a knockoff waffle house in the original show! i'm not just making a reylo fandom joke.
> 
> i am radioactivesaltghoul on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com/) and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/radioactivesaltghoul) and r_saltghoul on [twitter](https://twitter.com/r_saltghoul).


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